“Promise?”

Now her smile seemed less sad. “Promise.” She stood up, gathering her purse and square gray slips of paper, and offered her hand. “Show me which doctor’s office you came from, okay? Let’s get you back so your mom doesn’t worry.”

“‘Kay,” said Ronnie, and then noticed how her belly bulged, like she wasn’t fat at all. “Hey—you gonna have a baby?”

She looked shocked for a moment, but then the smile came back. “Yes, yes I am.”

“Can I…can I touch it?” asked Ronnie. He’d seen a lot of people do this before, ask if they could touch the woman’s belly to feel the baby before it came out.

“Why…oh, what the heck? Of course you can, hon. Go right ahead.”

Ronnie wiped his hands on his jacket to make sure they were clean, and then placed both of them on the woman’s protruding belly.

And he Knew. And it Scared him. And it Hurt him. And it made him Sad. And Sick. And he Made a Wish. He Wished away the Hurt of her unborn baby and, he hoped, the nice lady herself.

He looked up at her, nearly in tears, and said: “Mirror, mirror, tell me true/Am I pretty or am I plain?”

She stared at him for a moment, looking as if she hadn’t understood what he’d said, and then asked: “What did you s-say, hon?”

Ronnie could tell that he’d scared her, maybe even made her think he was weird, a ree-tard, a sped, and he didn’t want that, she seemed so nice, so he just shrugged and said, “Nothing.”

She took him back to the doctor’s office, and met his mother, and they were nice to one another, and before she left, the woman knelt down and gave Ronnie a hug and said, “My name’s Lucy, hon, and I hope my baby grows up to be just as sweet and considerate as you,” before she rose to her feet, wished Ronnie’s mom a nice day, and walked outside.

Ronnie was too confused to speak for several minutes after this encounter, because the ability, the facility, the power had just revealed a new and frightening facet to him.

We need to leave him right here for the moment; a confused, lonely, damaged little boy watching a young woman named Lucy walk away from him. Oh, they’ll meet again—in fact, they’ll meet two times more before our story is done, though only one of them will remember the other.

But for the moment, we need to leave Ronald James Williamson standing here, in the waiting room of his doctor’s office, clutching his Mommy’s hand, watching a pregnant woman named Lucy walk away.

The thing to remember, though, is this: at this precise moment, both of them are feeling confused and helpless. It unites them, binds them together; a nearly invisible silver thread running through time and space, alive and vibrating, feeling their every breath, their every heartbeat, their every thought and want and pain and need. It knows them as well as they know themselves, perhaps even better than they know themselves, and it will never allow them to separate.